The UK would like to implement a new system (originally brought up by the Labour party) that would oblige Internet access providers to monitor all electronic communications. The ISPs would have to store logs of all communications, though they say the actual content of emails wouldn't be recorded without a warrant.

They will most likely forge email providers certificates in order to intercept encrypted traffic, because most browser by default trust just about any certificate emitted by a "company" most users wont even notice.

If you are a UK citizen you can sign this petition. You can also check out ORG who follow these issues very closely (the only thing they do wrong is that they use bitly links!).

This came out yesterday, yet it's not an April fools joke..

Read more:

• Phone and email records to be stored in new spy plan - telegraph.co.uk
• Backlash over email and web monitoring plan - bbc.co.uk
• Stop the government snooping on every email and Facebook message - action.openrightsgroup.org
• Scrap Plans to Monitor all Emails and Web Usage - epetitions.direct.gov.uk

In some coffee shops you can easily get access to the Internet, what they do is just give you the password and voila. Neat right ? Anyway, these other coffee shops, chains to be precise, hire a 3rd party company to do it for them. So the other day I went in to one of them to get a coffee and an IP. This is what I noticed.. images.

And then, just to make sure I could feel the chilling effect of being censored... They blocked reddit.com/r/ACTA !!

Actually they blocked ALL of Reddit.

So there you go, the future of the Internet could be this.

Demand Progress has started an open letter to twitter and asked its subscriber's to sign it, the letter is short and as follows:

While I am against any for of censorship I am also against telling Twitter how to run their business. In this case they aren't abusing employees, nature or other such things. If you (Demand Progress or anyone else) are not happy with their new terms and conditions you are always free to not use their services.

That said, after reading Twitter's Tweets still must flow post it seems almost kosher.. They claim they will attempt (that is the word I dislike) to mark censored posts as such, so to inform the user they are being censored according to their government's laws. If true it could actually somehow have a positive effect, imagine people's reaction when clearly seeing how much information is withheld from them.

I would also like to correct Demand Progress on one point, Twitter is not an "Open Platform", I cannot interact with twitter users in any way unless I create an account with Twitter. Open platforms are services that use Status.net (Like Identi.ca), Friendica, Diaspora and the like, they allow users to communicate between independent nodes and hence avoid any central policing and/or control of it's users and their personal data.

In conclusion I must add that if Twitter's new rules upsets anyone it's actually a good reminder that Twitter does not belong to its users nor is it a public service. Their terms of service clearly stipulate that users accept that Twitter reserve the right to remove any content, and all of Twitter's users have accepted those terms.

How can the USA authorities take down a Hong-Kong based company and arrest people in New-Zealand ? Ars Technica explains, it turns out that the actions are based on the fact that Megaupload's clients were often in the USA, they ran adverts there and interacted with the USA market actively. In a way they are considered to have been running at least part of their business on USA grounds.

Fair or not, it seems that that is how the cookie crumbles, and crumbling it is. Personally I don't care for such websites and Kim Dotcom, aka Kimble Special Agent, seems far from being an angel. However it's still hard to accept that they can be taken down in an instant drug lord style. It doesn't seem like the accusations are half as bad as some towards companies that have either leaked petrol all over the world or have bankrupted families.. ...(insert long list of companies that messed up way more seriously and have in some cases even been bailed out).

In reaction to such news, an other "upload" service provider called Uploaded.to has decided to close it's service to the USA, this should help avoid breaking USA law on USA territory.

This whole abusive world policing attitude could earn the USA some Interweb censorship, but not from SOPA/PIPA this time, but simply from websites that do not want to have to deal with USA law. It's true that this Megaupload takedown happened right after the anti-SOPA strike, the what when why questions have been talked about all over the Internet, but now I am wondering if this isn't exactly what the USA wants, a censored Internet, like China and Iran, but censored voluntarily by website owners in fear of a possible breach of USA law and it's possible effects on one's postal address.

Update: In the past couple of days, many companies that provide the same services as Megaupload have either limited their services, closed their services to the U.S.A. or even just plain closed. Torrentfreak's report on the disturbance in the ecosystem.

I just heard about Global Censorship Checkpoints, it's aim is to document various projects around the world that want to police the Internet. On this site you can see, which polices are implemented or under study in each country, there are also links to local organisations that warn about the dangers and such.